The New York Times' Scores

For 20,311 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 49% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 61
Highest review score: 100 Short Cuts
Lowest review score: 0 Gummo
Score distribution:
20311 movie reviews
  1. A dreary pileup of hard-luck monologues and run-down locations, Mark Webber’s Flesh and Blood straddles the line between fact and fiction with exhausting earnestness and a fatal dearth of narrative.
  2. Santa & Andrés begins as a film about separation and pain, but becomes a movie about reconciliation and healing.
  3. Everything fits together too neatly in “Three Billboards,” even when chaos descends, but the performers add enough rough texture so that it doesn’t always feel so worked.
  4. Most radically, this is a Poirot with heart. This interpretation is a dumb idea, but Mr. Branagh, an actor of prodigious skills, can at least pull this one half off. It’s not the only dumb idea in this film, which nevertheless bounces along in a way that’s sometimes almost entertaining.
  5. The truth turns into a tangled mess in A River Below, a bold and urgent documentary whose seemingly straightforward story quickly runs awry.
  6. LBJ
    Directed by Rob Reiner from Joey Hartstone’s script, LBJ is a frustratingly underdeveloped vehicle for Mr. Harrelson’s talents as well as an unfortunate missed opportunity.
  7. Jason Wise’s documentary, which relies on re-enactments and backstage footage with sparing use of performances, is a love letter to the performer but not the business, in which she managed to achieve a measure of fame for nine decades, while still being overlooked. Her single-minded focus on work is presented as admirable but also something of a curse.
  8. As an unlikely love story, this movie excels, presenting a relationship so affectionate and warm that it overwhelms the jokes.
  9. Considering all that’s been written and said over the last year, there’s not much new to learn from 11/8/16. But the film remains engaging for its stories, and is likely to be more instructive in the future, when passions have cooled. Judging by most people here, that won’t be soon.
  10. Even if Last Flag Flying isn’t quite persuasive, it is nonetheless enormously thought-provoking, and its roughness is a sign of how earnestly it grapples with matters that other movies about war prefer not to think about.
  11. Some of the tougher interviews suggest that Mr. Milewski would like Dream Boat to be more substantial, but that impulse is mostly kept at bay in favor of lighter scenes.
  12. No Dress Code Required chronicles the grudging advance of cultural change.
  13. As a screenwriter, Ms. Morgan is nimble with glib conversation, and she is fearless at playing an often unlikable character. But this movie might only narrowly pass the Bechdel test, and mustering sympathy for Annette’s affluent, insular circle is difficult. The plot resolutions ultimately feel pat, and the conflicts, in retrospect, thin.
  14. Dark corners of the immigrant experience in New York City, especially for women, are frighteningly dramatized in Ana Asensio’s suspense film Most Beautiful Island, a modest but effective writing-directing debut.
  15. This film is sensitively wrought. It’s credible in its evocation of mid-’70s suburbia. The acting is excellent throughout, and Ross Lynch in the role of Dahmer elicits genuine sympathy for an increasingly lost but not yet monstrous soul. But in abandoning the subjective perspective of the graphic novel, My Friend Dahmer feels a little lacking in purpose.
  16. As moving as Mr. de la Manitou’s testimony sometimes is, this movie too often feels like a credulity-straining attempt at hagiography.
  17. There’s a morbid fascination inherent to documentaries like A Gray State, which is engrossing for the reasons it’s also unsatisfying: As Adam Shambour, a friend of Mr. Crowley’s, says, it’s a mystery that answers all the major questions except “Why?”
  18. Add the magnificent Christine Baranski to the mix and A Bad Moms Christmas, while still a slog of base sight gags and lazy profanity, becomes marginally more bearable. Only marginally, given that this pitiful follow-up to last year’s “Bad Moms” is even less able to distinguish between crass and comedic.
  19. Though not nearly as mindful or meaty as Mr. Miike’s 2011 triumph, 13 Assassins, “Blade” is creatively gory fun.
  20. Marvel could have gone grimmer, broodier and sterner, but that isn’t its onscreen way; so it has made Thor sunnier, sillier and funnier. It’s a good fit, at least for a while.
  21. Absorbing and finely wrought, 1945 is not perfect.
  22. As a resource for those looking to understand the process of recovery, it’s hard to imagine a more comprehensive or sympathetic look at the challenge of surviving.
  23. The star of the movie is a compelling figure, and Mr. D’Ambrosio presents quite a few people from Mr. Serpico’s past who have a similar draw. But the director’s filmmaking instincts are not always salutary.
  24. You might think you’ve seen this all before. You probably have, but never quite like this. What Ms. Gerwig has done — and it’s by no means a small accomplishment — is to infuse one of the most convention-bound, rose-colored genres in American cinema with freshness and surprise.
  25. For all the linguistic gymnastics, the film is hamstrung by its directors’ lack of visual imagination.
  26. Mr. Mully’s actions speak for themselves, and his robust personality makes him a pleasure to listen to. If the film doesn’t always dig deeply into this man’s life, we still see the results of his efforts. Those are enough to admire.
  27. Ms. Didion’s triumph, as a writer and a human being, has been to take the age for what it is, to pinpoint how she saw it, and to stick it out.
  28. Mr. Clooney gets some things right in Suburbicon, including visually and with his two appealing child actors, who together give the movie a heartbeat.... But he skimps on the adult characters’ inner lives, and, once the narrative weight shifts to the Lodges, he never finds the tone that balances the movie’s sincerity with its nihilism.
  29. The Square is ultimately a long version of Christian’s rambling apology, ostentatiously smart, maybe too much so for its own good, but ultimately complacent, craven and clueless.
  30. Ms. Betts refrains from easy, uplifting answers and facile condemnations of organized religion. Aided by Kat Westergaard’s warm, restrained cinematography, she takes the viewer close to an understanding of Cathleen’s evolving sense of her relationship with God.

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